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What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

arstechnica.com

61–70 of 230 posts

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#61
The limited access to space probably contributed to his mental episode. If he could be fairly confident in the experiment being flown again, it wouldn't have caused him this amount of stress.

So in a way more access to space might lower the percentage of such episodes.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#62

If you hate the format of these kinds of article let me summarize: Guy builds an experiment, flies it, it doesn't work, requests more time to get it working, is denied, threatens 'not to come back', goes into a depression, worries crew that he'll open the door to space, eventually granted more time to work on the experiment, gets it working. There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with…

> If you hate the format of these kinds of article You mean long-form articles? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-form_journalism I don't think the problem is with the format, but with your expectations. Somehow you were expecting a straight answer to the question in the title; instead, it's a detailed look into the incident and the context around it.

Is there a rule preventing an abstract from being added at the beginning of such an article? You know, just to understand rapidly whether the rest of the read matches your interest.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#63
post #3

I wonder how much time the duct tape would have actually bought if he tried to open it anyway.

Possibly long enough for the person opening it to think twice about the consequences of the action they were about to take? Same concept as putting high barriers on bridges, or selling paracetamol (acetaminophen) in smaller packs. These changes do nothing to stop someone who is committed to the act, but they provide a small energy barrier which can be enough to defeat the perturbations of a temporarily irrational min…

Given the size of the space shuttle it may also be so there is enough time for someone else to notice what’s going on and intervene.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#64
post #26

The article was interesting, but wow, reading that page used up 20% of my battery and required a reboot stop whatever it was causing excessive lag throughout the OS. I’ve noticed news sites are basically unusable on mobile. Sure I’m using an iPhone 7, but it’s fine for every other use except news site. If even Ars is this user hostile, I think I have to consider news sites as fundamentally user-antogonistic, and not…

I use brave on iOS and didn't notice any ads fwiw. There's also reader mode. Might be worth checking out.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An airliner's external doors are designed such that they're held closed by internal pressure. Thus opening a door on the ground is pretty easy, which is convenient because that's the only place you should open them. But opening at cruise is extremely difficult. Now - a strong person can do it when the plane is far enough up that it's very scary, after all some normal passenger airports are a few thousand feet above s…

> Now - a strong person can do it when the plane is far enough up that it's very scary Is this true? Some back of the napkin math: An airliner crusing at 30,000 feet is in air at about 0.3 ATM. Cabins are pressurized to about 0.8 ATM, so net air perssure is about 0.5 ATM. That's around 7 lbs/in^2. An airliner door is about 72"x42" for a total of around 3,000 in^2. So you need to be able to lift about 10 tons to open…

You are agreeing with him, he says you can't do it at cruising altitude.

He says you can do it high enough to be scary, but opening the door 100ft before landing would probably cause panic even if it isn't all that dangerous.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An airliner's external doors are designed such that they're held closed by internal pressure. Thus opening a door on the ground is pretty easy, which is convenient because that's the only place you should open them. But opening at cruise is extremely difficult. Now - a strong person can do it when the plane is far enough up that it's very scary, after all some normal passenger airports are a few thousand feet above s…

> Now - a strong person can do it when the plane is far enough up that it's very scary Is this true? Some back of the napkin math: An airliner crusing at 30,000 feet is in air at about 0.3 ATM. Cabins are pressurized to about 0.8 ATM, so net air perssure is about 0.5 ATM. That's around 7 lbs/in^2. An airliner door is about 72"x42" for a total of around 3,000 in^2. So you need to be able to lift about 10 tons to open…

It has happened at a few hundred feet, iirc. Nowhere near cruise but being at 3000 feet and having someone open the door would indeed be terrifying.

I’m guessing something like that is what the GP meant.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An airliner's external doors are designed such that they're held closed by internal pressure. Thus opening a door on the ground is pretty easy, which is convenient because that's the only place you should open them. But opening at cruise is extremely difficult. Now - a strong person can do it when the plane is far enough up that it's very scary, after all some normal passenger airports are a few thousand feet above s…

> Now - a strong person can do it when the plane is far enough up that it's very scary Is this true? Some back of the napkin math: An airliner crusing at 30,000 feet is in air at about 0.3 ATM. Cabins are pressurized to about 0.8 ATM, so net air perssure is about 0.5 ATM. That's around 7 lbs/in^2. An airliner door is about 72"x42" for a total of around 3,000 in^2. So you need to be able to lift about 10 tons to open…

> after all some normal passenger airports are a few thousand feet above sea level

The parent commenter is referring to airports at high elevations. They mean to say that opening the doors is almost impossible at cruising altitude, which is far above any airports. Hence, the doors can only be opened when not on the ground during early ascent and late descent.

I hope my explanation makes sense.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#69
post #32

So leave a switch to kill all crew available at all times till you think someone is unstable, then lock it. Genius

As the article mentioned after the Apollo one incident NASA was being very careful to make it possible for people to get out in case of emergency.

Unfortunately that also means it’s very easy to get out in case of an emergency that’s only in your head.

Re: What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he's not coming back?

#70

If you hate the format of these kinds of article let me summarize: Guy builds an experiment, flies it, it doesn't work, requests more time to get it working, is denied, threatens 'not to come back', goes into a depression, worries crew that he'll open the door to space, eventually granted more time to work on the experiment, gets it working. There are consequences for letting this kind of person fly and dealing with…

> If you hate the format of these kinds of article You mean long-form articles? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-form_journalism I don't think the problem is with the format, but with your expectations. Somehow you were expecting a straight answer to the question in the title; instead, it's a detailed look into the incident and the context around it.

Personally I hate articles which are split across multiple pages. It's unnecessary.
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